You just can’t say no to a nice thick slice of moist cake with creamy dreamy frosting. I went back through my past decade’s photos and was a bit surprised (shocked even) at how infrequently my camera has made it to the table at my kids’ birthday parties. Nevertheless, I did manage to capture a handful of sweet cakeshots 🙂

I often find myself, camera in hand, glued to the front of my fish tank. Can never get enough of the constantly changing interplay of color set against that lush green background. I find the real challenge when shooting the fish tank is getting enough light to capture the constantly moving fish without blurring. This despite the fact that the tank itself is equipped with four 4′ florescent high-output lamps, half full-spectrum, and half actinic-daylight. As it turns out though, despite all those lumens, the best shots ultimately come when the fish pause momentarily, and in that same moment I get lucky enough to be pulling the trigger. What does this mean? It means that to get pics like the ones below, typically takes me 20-30 shots while I wait for that lucky pause 😉

An unknown species of Killifish (unknown to me that is, not unknown in the scientific sense) in my 70 gallon planted tank. This is one of several "surprises" that Justin picked up at a Boston Aquarium Society auction and sneaked into my tank during the night...

An overall view of my 70 gallon planted tank. You can see a little bit about how the tank is custom built right into shelving in the livingroom so it's a little more like part of the house and a little less like an elephant in the room.

For a while, I kept Salvinia, a floating surface plant like duckweed on steroids. Was beautiful to see, and from below was practically mystical, but in the end, I had to hog it out as it spread so fast and so thick, it blocked much of the overhead light which impacted the rest of the submersed plants.

One of my all-time favorite fish (notice I said "one of", it's really not possible to pick just one!). Here a small school of Rummynose Tetras (Hemigrammus rhodostomus) hovers in front of a giant Crypto in my 70 gallon planted tank.